We’ve had a couple of sad cases of EEE around here, which led to the death of a little girl and also a dog. This has led to the predictable clamor for mosquito spraying (as if you can eradicate every mosquito in the world). It also led to the issuing of an “advisory” from the health department that your should “consider every mosquito as carrying an infection.” Oh, OK. Normally I give them the benefit of the doubt, try and get to know them, maybe have them over for dinner, and if they seem nice, offer to swap blood test results. But now that the DOH has issued a warning, I guess I’ll just fucking smash the little bastards instead.

Got up this morning, and heard water running. Found the hot water faucet in our “blue” bathroom had been left on. Not full on, but not at a trickle, either. Good thing my water heater is on a timer, though that still means an awful lot of water went needlessly into the septic system and instead of having to heat a tank full of fairly warm water, it’ll have to heat up a full tank of cold stuff). Why would you leave the water on? No idea.

I can’t imagine why it’s difficult to shut the water off when you’re done. Or how you would “forget.” I don’t know who the culprit was, though my stepson is here this weekend – as he is every weekend, and he’s a fairly likely suspect (let’s just say I’ve got it narrowed down to two). He tends to do things like leave the fence gate open or the house door open. I guess because somewhere along the line it became OK for him to just say “oops” and that means everything’s alright.

So if the gate’s left open and the dog who’s getting a little on the deaf side these days decides to wonder out into the road and get killed, as long as you say you’re sorry, then, eh, well, that’s OK I guess. Or if you waste water, eh, water’s cheap, right? Especially if you’re not paying the bills. And if the septic system gets overwhelmed, no biggie. As long as you’re not the one who has to wallow around in human waste trying to fix it. I feel as if I need to do a patrol of the house and make sure everything’s closed and off – except I got to bed first most of the time, so that’s hard to do. I had to put door closers on the doors, because I kept finding them left open, and had the dogs unexpectedly come visit me. Of course, there’s nothing I can do or say, because that just makes me the asshole (which I could live with if it did any good – but it doesn’t).

On the bright side, my tractor now does what it’s supposed to do, thanks to the help and hard work of my friend John and my sister. For those keeping score, I had to replace the rear lift link. This links the 3PH lift mechanism to the mower deck mechanism. In theory, it wasn’t a difficult mission, and I thought the hard part would be dropping the deck w/o being able to lower it first.

Turns out, the hard part was beating the goddamn link off (especially as back spasms ensued). But, in the end, everything was back in place and functioning. And I was able to get the grass cut.

So now I’m pricing out a Porta Power, and I really should get myself a set of torches (been meaning to do that for years now) to go along with gate and faucet alarms.

Oh, and a new back. Maybe I can find a rebuilt.